http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
I COULDN'T help thinking about one of my favorite
scenes from the old sitcom "WKRP in
Cincinnati" this week. Les Nessman the uptight
news anchor reads an urgent report:

"Monster lizard ravages East Coast! Mayors in five New
England cities have issued emergency requests for
federal disaster relief as a result of a giant lizard that
descended on the East Coast last night! Officials say that
this lizard, the worst since '78, has devastated
transportation, disrupted communication and left many
hundreds homeless!"

It's pointed out to him that the "B" is missing from the
printer; it's supposed to read "blizzard." Les replies, "The
wire service never lies!"

Well, this week the East Coast media managed to
include the "B" in "blizzard." All that was missing was the
actual blizzard.

Tuesday's New York Times headlined, "Imperfect Storm
is Less of a Blow than Was Feared." NBC and MSNBC
went with the tag line "Nature's Wrath" all day. Bear in
mind that "wrath" is a pretty serious word. It's usually
associated with the vengeful and jealous God of the Old
Testament. Wrath is a punishing anger, greasing the
skids for lots of smiting and the laying waste of cities.

In Washington D.C., the local news - as always - had
residents so freaked out that you took your life in your
hands even trying to buy toilet paper. When the "Storm of
the Century" - as numerous reports described it (banking
on the convenience that this century is still a toddler) -
turned out to be less Nature's Fury and more the
network's folly, the media stuck with it. It was if they
borrowed a page from Les Nessman's playbook insisting,
"The wire service never lies!"

This week's storm hype was nothing new. Across the country, local television
stations are outfitting themselves with "Storm Centers" and "Storm Watch
Teams," even though it's hard to "watch" a storm every day and even less helpful
to do so. Surveys regularly reveal that weather is the top ratings-getter for local
news, above even crime and sports. And since local news programs are
money-making enterprises, it's not surprising that the hype has a payoff for the
news directors. But the payoff for everybody else is more cynicism about the
press. For example, one irate woman wrote a letter to The Washington Post this
week: "I have a theory that the toilet paper manufacturers pay the weather
broadcasters handsomely to make these projections, because every 15 minutes
WTOP radio and the TV stations tell us to buy some eggs and toilet paper to get
ready for "the storm of the century!"

But it's one thing for local news outlets to hype local weather. Because they're so
close to their customers, it's more likely they will learn the right lessons from
crying wolf. "Over the years we've identified three kinds of storms: nuisance,
plowable and crippling," the chief meteorologist for WGAL, serving Lancaster,
Pa., told the Lancaster Sunday News. "But maybe 'crippling' is a word we should
reserve. Maybe from now on, we should say 'potentially serious' instead." It's
another thing when national networks become invested in hyping weather stories,
something they are clearly doing more and more.

In 1999, the Weekly Standard documented this pattern. Prior to 1996, bad
weather never made the Top 10 list of network evening news. In 1996, bad
weather was the eighth biggest news story on network news. In 1997, it moved up
to fifth. Despite the fact that weather wasn't twice as interesting, or as bad,
coverage doubled in 1998. In 1999, bad-weather stories came in third, after
Kosovo and the Clinton scandals and before the Columbine shooting.

There are real public-policy consequences to this trend. The more you send Dan
Rather or somebody else with important hair to "witness" Hurricane Floyd, the
more you endlessly hype blizzards, real or imagined. And the more you suggest,
implicitly or explicitly, that the weather is getting worse, the more likely it is that
politicians will make bogus issues and unneeded aid a national priority.
Moreover, more important topics for discussion get crowded off the public's
radar. Indeed, one can wonder which would get more coverage from the
networks these days, a monster lizard or a monster
blizzard.